Fracture toughness and tensile strength of 316L stainless steel cellular lattice structures manufactured using the selective laser melting technique

Microcomputer tomography (CT) reveals that the cellular structure parts with different build directions were manufactured free of defect by the SLM. The density of the lattice structure samples was found at 1.35 g/cm3 for both vertical and horizontal building directions while the relative density of solid struts is 96.25%. The tensile and fracture toughness properties in vertical building direction samples are higher than those samples that were built in horizontal building direction. There was no big difference between the Ashby and Gibson micromechanical model to predict fracture toughness and Single Edge Notch Bend (SENB) test results from 0.2 to 0.5 MPa m0.5.